Love is Power

21 September 2012

“You can’t park like that, you dumb bitch!” A man, not ten feet away,
had just shouted this at my then-girlfriend Su.

It was the middle of winter in New England, and the streets were
narrow with large snow banks piled on each side. Earlier, Su had
called people all day trying to get someone to remove the snow – to
no avail.

That night I was helping her get groceries out of the car, parked
temporarily in front of the house, and the snow bank made it hard for
other cars to pass. She laughingly commented that “now people can’t
get through!” Besides being unable to finding someone to plow the
snow, a lot of other stuff had gone wrong that day, and the best we
could do was laugh.

And then that man starting shouting at us from inside his truck. We
took it in stride, but then the guy rolled down his window. He just
wouldn’t stop. He parked up the street, got out and continued
shouting, even after we told him we were parked there because Su’s
disabled and that we’d call the police if he didn’t stop.

When he finally left I was furious. This was right before heading to
aikido practice, so I thought to myself, “What’s an aikido way to deal
with this?” If you don’t know what aikido is, it’s pretty much a
martial art for hippies. Here’s a quote from its founder:

Aikido is love. You make this great great love of the universe your
heart and then you must make your own mission the protection and love
of all things.

– O Sensei

In aikido you train to extend love to all things - including angry
jerks yelling at you for no reason. Including people who are attacking
you, whether physically or verbally or indirectly.

So I took a step back, and tried to see it from Angry Jerk’s
perspective. Clearly, he was distressed. For someone to blow up
uncontrollably like that they have to be in some kind of emotional
turmoil. And that freed something up inside me.

Thinking about Angry Jerk with love and compassion opened up enough
space for me to realize that, actually, I was completely OK. Sure,
this guy had made me scared, but right then I was physically safe and
unharmed. What I found was that extending love and compassion
towards the people attacking you forces you to be OK. You have to be
full in order to give, and the act of giving creates fullness

I went to AJ’s house. When I knocked on the door, he answered it, and
I said something like, “I know that the way we parked made it hard to
drive – in fact, we were about to move the car when you came by.
We’re sorry it made it hard for you to drive.”

We went back and forth a little, and the guy said he thought Su was
laughing at him. When I told him she was laughing at the situation,
not at him, he started saying he was sorry over and over, sorry for
being a jerk, and I should tell Su he apologized.

In this situation, many people would feel like they had to “set this
jackass straight”. They’d feel the need to assert their manhood or
otherwise angrily retaliate to demand respect.

But think about it - how likely are you to respect someone who’s
blowing up at you? Fear them, maybe. Respect them, no. Besides that,
you risk escalating the situation to the point where it does become
physical. And finally, you end up losing sight of the fact that
another human is in distress. You diminish your capacity for
compassion.

We never invited the guy over for dinner or anything, but I think
the situation was resolved pretty happily. It was pretty awesome to be
able to confront the guy in a non-threatening, non-accusatory way, and
to have him end up apologizing.

There have been many other times during my life where I’ve employed
this technique, and it has never failed me. It empowers me to protect
myself and in the process lift up others.